I'm a victim of Stendhall Syndrome.

But I can't say I wasn't warned. As Wikitravel says...

"Beward of Stendhall Syndome, namely, dizziness caused by being overwhelmed by Florence's fantastic art. Yes, it's a real syndrome, named after 19th-century French author Stendhal, who suffered from it during his stay in Florence. If you get overwhelmed, rest your eyes and legs, get some food, and save the rest of Florence for tomorrow."

Art, food, Florence's general amazingness...I just couldn't handle it anymore.

Laura and I were in our hostel by 8:30pm today--that NEVER happens. We're blaming it on da syndrome.

These past three days have been incredible though....just incredible. I already wrote a bit about Day 1 in Florence, so I'll just pick up with Day 2.

Day 2 in Florence:

We slept in a bit, showered, ate breakfast at Archi Rossi. Then we decided to walk around and find the Accademia Galleries because we had a reservation there later that afternoon. On the way there, we found an outdoors market. We didn't buy anything, but it was super fun to just look around.

outdoors market.

Then, we found an indoors market--only instead of stuff like leather jackets, scarves, purses, and the like, the indoor market was full of food. And food is something Katelyn and I do very well. 

We met the nicest old Italian man who gave us crackers and truffles. His products were really great and quite cheap. I just wanted to buy all of his pasta and spices. Too bad I can only carry so much. Every time Katelyn and I would sigh and pick something up and then put it back, he bobbed his head understandingly and patted our shoulder. We ended up buying a couple things from him. When we walked past his booth a second time, he motioned for us to stop and then gave us both some delicious biscotti. 

oh, decisions, decisions...

We ate lunch at this indoor market at a place that has gained quite a name with the locals. We had their famous beef and tripe sandwich. Tripe!! It actually wasn't too bad, although a bit squishy for my taste. The sandwich itself was pretty much heart attack on a plate, but delicious. 

where we bought our sandwiches of beef and tripe.
(we didn't know there would be tripe in it before we bought it)

Next, we wondered around...and ended up at Santa Maria del Fiore--THE cathedral in Florence. It's famous for its dome, painted by Brunelleschi. The dome was incredible, but kind of hard to see because we could only go so far in. 

We had made reservations at Accademia, and am I glad we did. The lines were HUGE. Thankfully, we got to skip the big line and get in the much shorter reservation line (15 minute wait instead of 3 hours). The museum was amazing. By far, my favorite item was (of course) the David, reputedly the most famous sculpture in the world.

the David.

There is just so much meaning behind it (read about it--really) and the gracefulness and beauty of the statue just took my breath away every single time I saw it (we saw it a couple times). Michelangelo--you're genius. I also loved the series of unfinished slave sculptures he did for the grave of Pope Julius II. Even though they were rough, you could still see the vision Michelangelo had. A couple other favorite sculptures were The Rape of the Sabine Woman and a couple sculptures from Botticelli. I just  really really enjoyed this museum. Blew my mind.

After we got out, we went back to the hostel to rest for a little bit and come up with a gameplan for the rest of the night. 

We went back to Santa Maria del Fiore, but this time to climb el Duomo--both to better see the dome painted by Brunelleschi, and also to get a fantastic view of the city. Despite having to climb 463 stairs to the top, it was worth every euro.

1) katelyn climbing the stairs behind me.
2) el duomo.
3) me on the top!

views from the top of El Duomo.

being happy.

We eventually had to leave el Duomo because it was going to close. We were starving after climbing all those stairs, so we looked for a particular restaurant that had been recommended as a small, good, cheap place. There, I ate the best spaghetti of my life. See, the thing about pasta in Italy is--the Italians let the pasta really shine, while in the States, we smother the pasta with sauce until we can't taste it anymore. Probably because the pasta in the States isn't that great. But THIS pasta...oh my heavens. So good. And the sauce tasted like it came from fresh tomatoes. It was so flavorful, but not overwhelming.


Another cool thing about this restaurant was that it's super intimate--so you share tables with people you don't even know. We ate dinner with an Italian lady from Rome. It was super interesting to talk to her and she gave us lots of suggestions for when we go there. :)

amazing spaghetti.
it looks simple, but that's part of why it was so good.

And the rest of our night? Well, it consisted of sitting among sculptures in a plaza in Florence, happily eating gelato and listening to a guitar player. Then we got up, went to another plaza, listened to more fantastic music, enjoyed the view, and thought about how lucky we were.

1) eating gelato, como siempre.
2) the second plaza we went to. it was almost completely dark when
we were there, but the flash lit everything up.

the music we were listening to. 

i'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

Okay. I said I was also going to write about Day 3 in Florence, but I'm too tired. I'll do it tomorrow...on the train to Rome or something.